startled. His thin shoulders sagged in his shapeless overcoat.

The nearest great sun-ray globe, rising on its tall, steel-girdered tower above Leiccsendale, purred softly, shedding its warmth and brilliant light, and its special, invisible radiations, which acted as a stimulus to all vegetable growth, over the scene. Smoke from rich, ripe cornfields nearby, tanged in the cool air, like a questioning ghost. Even the far-off sun itself, scarcely more than a great star in the vast distance, seemed to wait, to see what would happen during the next tense moment.

Ron Leiccsen's grin became a trifle more crooked. Otherwise he scarcely moved, though his eyes admired Anna Charles' vigorous spirit.

"I apologize, if I've hurt anyone's feelings—without good reason," he said at last. "I look up to anyone with plenty of nerve, like Arne Reynaud, or Miss Charles, here. But we can't successfully fight Callistan heat-bombs, and their horde of heavily armed ships. We can't expect any aid from Earth, since the Callistan space navy is supreme in this part of the void. To continue to resist alone, is just plain stupid. We'd all be killed or enslaved—Titan taken away from us anyway, in the end. And we have women and kids, remember! Miss Charles, who is a school teacher, should know that we have kids, here, as well as anybody else! Tots. Who wants to see them enslaved, abused, massacred? So, though it will hurt plenty to do it, let's face facts! Let's leave Titan before these laughing devils from Callisto can fly so many war-craft out from their world that even escape will be cut off!"

Ron Leiccsen paused for just a moment, to let his arguments sink home, and to let the grim truth register in the minds of his hard, embattled listeners. Then he went on.

"Of course, if Arne Reynaud has any information," he said, "any new trick, or any means at all that might give us hope of defeating these furry giants from Jupiter's outermost large moon, let him speak up! Otherwise his talk of fighting is exactly what I implied before—just senseless, foolish courage!"

When Ron Leiccsen finished speaking, farmers looked at each other, their faces puzzled. It was easy to see that common-sense was tempering their defiance against the Callistan hordes, now. Their wives. Their children. Even Anna Charles' features showed a sheepish, apologetic petulance for a moment, as though maybe she realized that the man whom she had as good as accused of traitorous cowardice, might have told the truth.

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